


game over

by gabriel42069



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Canonical Character Death, F/F, Game Over Timeline, Sprite Prototyping, [S] Game Over, aka Im Emo Over Jasprose Always?, she deserves the world...
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-08
Updated: 2017-10-08
Packaged: 2019-01-10 16:44:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,434
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12303285
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gabriel42069/pseuds/gabriel42069
Summary: This battle will not be the end of you.aka, the hubris of a god, and a heroic death twice over.





	game over

You don’t talk to your girlfriend before the final battle.

 

You’ll come to regret this in time, when you’re choking on your own blood, lying on the ground with your mother-daughter kneeling over you, tears dripping onto the stab wound in your chest. At the time, though, your hubris rationalizes it for you. There’s no way this battle will lead to your death. This is the alpha timeline. It has to be. You’ve been careful. You’ve made every plan, utilized your powers to their fullest extent.

 

This battle will not be the end of you.

 

-

 

Something goes wrong.

 

Everything goes wrong.

 

Jade looks at you like she doesn’t know you, eyes full of Green Sun fire and skin slate grey. John’s grandmother-granddaughter is wearing a circlet with an all-too familiar trident emblazoned on it, red circuits streaking across her preternaturally pale skin. Vriska’s dancestor is smiling cruel and lively, eyes no longer empty but full of yellow and blue, a glimmering ring on her finger. 

 

You try. All of you try. Your needles blaze magic fire in your hands, scorching your palms with white light.

 

Her Imperious Condescension looks into the yellow-jade eyes of your painfully mortal girlfriend, and unleashes hell in spitting red and blue fire. Kanaya screams as her flesh is vaporized, and then she’s gone.

 

She’s gone.

 

Your heart stops.

 

Your - your girlfriend, your matesprit, your patron saint, the reason you’re alive today, the love of your life, your  _ Kanaya _ .

 

You never got to tell her you loved her.

 

The Condesce turns to you with a self-satisfied smile curving her fuchsia lips, and rage fills your heart. You raise your needles over your head and shriek, your mouth forming words only the darkest part of you remembers as bolts of arcane lightning arc towards her.

 

It’s not enough. She smiles and raises her trident - you think Kanaya called it Poseidon’s Entente once, a sad smile on her face as she stroked her hands over a gold and fuchsia dress on a form. It was her friend’s weapon too, that she used to shepherd sea creatures with under the sea. Then, it sounded beautiful and gentle, a symbol of power and grace.

 

As it streaks towards the air towards you and roots itself in your chest, it isn’t beautiful anymore.

 

Your mother-daughter rushes towards you, enveloping you in her arms. Your world goes dark and empty.

 

-

 

Your comprehension of the events that follow are vague and incoherent, due to the fatal stab wound in your chest. Your daughter-mother sweeps you away and carries you through paradox space, clutching you close to her body. 

 

The planet you end up on isn’t familiar. She sets you down on the hard-packed soil, so different to LOLAR’s sand and sea or LOHAC’s burning-hot gears.

 

There’s a whirl from behind her and a gust of cool air sweeps over you. “Roxy?”

 

A long pause stretches between Roxy and who you presume is John. “What happened to Rose?” he asks hesitantly.

 

Roxy leans back over you, holding your hand in both of hers. “Mom? Mom! Please, wake up…” Her tears drip onto your already soaked tunic. “It’s me. Your, um, daughter, kinda.” She sobs. “Please don’t die,” she begs. She breathes hard and ragged. “Rose?”

 

With the last of your energy, you pull your aching eyes open. She’s beautiful as she leans over you. Your mother. Your daughter. 

 

“W…” You take a deep, painful breath. “What happened to me?”

 

“The witch got you, with her fork,” Roxy says bitterly. She squeezes your hand. “But you’re gonna be okay.”

 

“Oh.” You blink. It takes far too much effort to open your eyes again. “That’s nice.” A cough wrenches through your chest.

 

“Maybe you, uh.” She strokes your shoulder. “Shouldn’t try to talk now.”

 

“You saved me, didn’t you?” Your memory is coming back in flashes and glimpses. You remember warm hands on your arms, scooping you up and away from the blade embedded in your chest. She doesn’t answer. “Thanks.” Your heart hurts. “But… she’s gone, isn’t she? For good, I mean.”

 

Roxy quirks her lips in an unspoken question.

 

“I saw her die,” you admit. Reliving it is almost as painful as living it was. She was screaming, her skeleton lit up by blue and red as the rest of her melted. “And. It’s a shame, how…” Another cough. “A shame that I never even got to tell her…” Fresh tears leak from your ducts. “I loved her.”

 

She frowns. “Who?”

 

“Kanaya.” You frown and struggle to breathe. “But… you too, mom. You too.”

 

Your eyes close. Roxy’s sobs fade to silence.

 

At least you’ll get to see her again.

 

-

 

The world slowly fades in around you. You're lying on your back on cool grass. Water rushes in the distance, a thousand brooks babbling at once. The sun shines above your head, casting light through your closed eyelids.

 

You groan and open your eyes. The light hurts, but the pain in your middle is worse. You clutch your chest and try to breathe through the pangs. You recall a borrowed memory from a Rose long-dissolved and remember that this is how it feels to cease to exist.

 

Eventually, it passes. Your flesh knits itself back together and the blood staining your tunic disappears little by little. You push yourself to your feet and wince.

 

Your surroundings are familiar. A frog hops by your foot and croaks loudly, making you jump. You reach down and pick it up. Its skin is cool and slimy and it croaks reproachfully at you, as if to demand to be put down again. You acquiesce and set it down onto the grass.

 

Someone cries out behind you. You whip your head around and see a blur of incandescent skin and dark fabric running towards you. A weight slams into you and lifts you off the ground, holding you tight and twirling you around. You can’t help laughing even as you begin to feel dizzy.

 

“Rose!” Kanaya exclaims, leaning back from you and grinning bright and beautiful. She holds your face in her hands and presses frantic kisses over your face. “Rose, Rose, darling!”

 

“Kanaya,” you breathe. Relief washes over you like waves of rain over your forest on fire. You kiss her back, smudging her fangs with black lipstick. “I love you. I love you, I love you, I love -”

 

“I love you.” She strokes your cheeks and kisses you again. “I’m sorry I -” 

 

“You have nothing to apologize for, I should have -”

 

“No, I should -”   
  


You both break off and start to laugh. Kanaya’s cheeks flush pale green. 

 

“I never got a chance to thank Feferi for creating the dream bubbles,” Kanaya says. “I’m so glad I got to…” She trails off. “I mean, I’m glad it wasn’t goodbye forever.”   
  


“I know.” You take her hands in yours. You know your smile is embarrassingly wide and your cheek muscles feel painfully stressed, but you can’t stop grinning. “We left far too many threads undone for that to be the end of the story.”

 

You mean to continue, but pain rips through your chest like the points of a trident and you double over, clutching your chest desperately. “I -” You can’t get a word out before it spreads to your stomach, mooring itself in the top of your stomach and tugging up. Kanaya holds your shoulders as you shake. Hot tears spill from your eyes onto the grass. 

 

“I’m sorry,” you whisper, before everything goes black again.

 

-

 

The world is purple and it slips from your grasp, slick like oil and as weightless as a feather. You open your eyes and see John’s planet, and your hands before you, pale and purple-tinged, and the way your tunic trails off into wisps of lilac smoke, and the sword in the ground with the mask wrapped around it like a spoil of war, planted in front of the hole in the ground, planted in front of your  _ grave _ , and you scream.

 

You want her back, you want your girlfriend back, the threads are undone again and the tapestry has been ripped to pieces, torn into shreds, set on fire and you need her back, you need to tell her how much you love her, how much you need her, how much you want to be with her for the rest of your life. You need to apologize, you need to atone, you need to make up for your sin.

 

The ground is hard as you sink onto it, sobbing desperately into your hands. Purple tears fall like rain onto the ground.

 

You are lost again.


End file.
